Monthly Archives: October 2026

Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop's attempts to aggressively "clean" voter rolls—which included sending warning postcards to over 1,500 voters and altering registration statuses outside her statutory authority—were successfully intercepted by municipal clerks and the Michigan Bureau of Elections. Following complaints from local officials and residents, the state revoked Bishop's access to the Qualified Voter File and restored affected voters' statuses in time for the midterms. The episode has sparked a bipartisan local recall campaign against Bishop, illustrating both the vulnerabilities introduced by rogue local officials and the resilience of decentralized electoral safeguards. Read Article

Nevada voter fraud is shockingly rare, bears scant resemblance to Trump’s portrayal, analysis shows | Michael Lyle/Nevada Current

A new analysis published by Brookings Mountain West and UNLV's Lincy Institute—utilizing data from the Heritage Foundation—reveals that election fraud in Nevada and surrounding Mountain West states is extremely rare. The study identified only 11 instances of election fraud out of nearly 9 million votes cast in Nevada over a ten-year period, with the vast majority resulting in criminal convictions. Researchers noted that historical data shows recorded infractions bear little resemblance to widespread fraud claims, representing a tiny fraction of total ballots cast. Read Article

North Carolina: New state board guidance on unsealed inner envelopes leads to higher mail-in ballot rejection rates | Patricia Mazzei/The New York Times

Voting rights groups and local election officials warned that a new directive from North Carolina's Republican-majority State Board of Elections requiring the rejection of mail-in ballots with unsealed inner envelopes has resulted in a statewide rejection rate of roughly 3 percent, with higher spikes in larger counties. While state election officials defended the rule as a necessary measure to protect ballot integrity, critics and a federal judge who declined an eleventh-hour request to block the guidance noted it could potentially disenfranchise thousands of voters in a state known for razor-thin margins. Read Article

Texas discovers more backlogged voter registration records | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Just days before the start of early voting, Texas county election officials learned of a new state software error that backlogged approximately 15,000 voter address and name update records submitted through the state's Texas.gov portal since September 1. Local registrars—already strained from clearing a separate months-long backlog caused by a Department of Public Safety driver's license portal error—must now rapidly process the delayed records to ensure eligible voters can update their information in time. The Texas Association of County Election Officials strongly criticized the ongoing state-level technical mismanagement of the TEAM voter registration system, noting that the sudden influx creates severe administrative burdens during final pre-election preparations. Read Article

Utah GOP lawmakers requested a study on security of vote-by-mail. Here’s what it found. | Emily R. Anderson/The Salt Lake Tribune

A taxpayer-funded, $100,000 study conducted by Utah Valley University researchers—commissioned by GOP lawmakers following pushback against mail-in voting—concluded that Utah's vote-by-mail system is secure and that neither in-person nor mail voting is inherently more secure than the other. When evaluating proposals to require ID verification at ballot drop boxes, researchers found that staffing every drop box would cost approximately $8.1 million per election year and significantly increase wait times, while deploying "smart drop boxes" or digital ID systems would introduce substantial financial, technical, and logistical hurdles. Despite these findings, Utah is still scheduled under a 2025 law to end automatic mail-in balloting starting in 2029, requiring voters to opt in. Read Article

Wisconsin: In-person absentee voting surges amid declines in ballots arriving by mail | Rich Kremer/WPR

Data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission highlights a dramatic 65 percent statewide surge in in-person absentee voting on the opening day of early voting compared to the 2022 midterms, with major urban centers like Milwaukee, Dane, and Kenosha counties seeing steep increases. Concurrently, mail-in ballots arriving at clerk offices have dropped by nearly 26 percent. Political analysts and election officials attribute this shift in voter behavior to heightened electorate mobilization alongside ongoing concerns regarding postal delivery times and administrative scrutiny over mail-in voting. Read Article

National: Trump’s Attacks on Voting Raise Fears He Will Try to Challenge Midterm Results | Zolan Kanno-Youngs/The New York Times

State and local election officials express growing concern that ongoing executive attacks on election integrity are laying the groundwork to contest adverse midterm results. While judicial decisions have repeatedly blocked attempts to directly assert federal authority over state-administered voting, federal departments have intensified efforts to investigate voter rolls, deploy nationwide polling place monitors, and circulate unsubstantiated claims of voting machine vulnerabilities and noncitizen registration. In response, state administrators across party lines are developing contingency plans to defend local election procedures against potential federal overreach or unannounced law enforcement interventions at polling locations. Read Article

National: Election activists press Trump to ban voting machines or even declare martial law if November results are in question | Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat

A coalition of conservative activists and high-profile Trump allies is pressing the administration to utilize federal emergency powers to restrict or ban electronic voting machines ahead of the midterm elections. Figures including Tina Peters, Cleta Mitchell, and Mike Lindell have petitioned the White House and federal agencies to mandate hand-counted paper ballots, invoke national security declarations over alleged foreign hardware vulnerabilities, or deploy federal agents to polling places. Legal scholars, election officials, and civil rights advocates emphasize that the president lacks the constitutional authority to unilaterally alter state-administered voting methods, noting that courts have repeatedly struck down executive actions attempting to assert federal control over election procedures. Read Article

National: Nine ways the Trump administration could interfere with the midterms | Mike Spector, Linda So, Peter Eisler and Ned Parker/Reuters

A comprehensive survey of more than 50 election administrators, legal scholars, and voting rights experts identified key potential flashpoints where federal authority could test state election autonomy ahead of and following the midterm elections. Key scenarios highlighted include federal seizures of voting equipment or ballots, aggressive deployment of federal election monitors, law enforcement or immigration actions near polling sites, national emergency declarations, and direct pressure to delay certification or refuse to seat state-certified winners in Congress. While the White House maintains its actions aim to bolster election integrity, legal experts emphasize that constitutional division of powers, statutory chain-of-custody safeguards, and robust judicial precedent continue to serve as primary guardrails for state-administered elections. Read Article

National: Experts say the midterms could face challenges, but are less concerned than in the spring | Nathaniel Rakich/Votebeat

President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about voter fraud, attempts to reshape U.S. election law, and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election have left plenty of people worried that his administration will try to interfere with the 2026 midterm elections. But what threats are worth taking seriously, and what is just doomerism? Pam Smith, the president and CEO of Verified Voting and one of the experts who changed her answer, offered a number of reasons for her reevaluation. She noted that, since the spring, several primaries took place without any armed federal intervention, and several states (such as California) have passed laws to strengthen existing prohibitions on voter intimidation. She added that, paradoxically, the Trump administration’s rhetoric hinting about federal agents at polling places “also has given rise to robust pushback, including several lawsuits seeking to prevent this kind of scenario in advance.” Read Article

National: Many GOP states have imposed new voting rules this year, some mirroring Trump’s midterm proposals | Gary Fields and Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

Nearly 40 new voting laws passed in Republican-controlled states are taking effect for the first time this midterm election cycle, with many enacting key elements of stalled federal administration proposals. While federal executive orders and congressional proposals for national voter ID, proof-of-citizenship mandates, and mail-voting restrictions were blocked or delayed, state legislatures in places like New Hampshire, South Dakota, and Ohio have successfully enacted parallel measures. Voting rights advocates and civil rights organizations emphasize that the state-level restrictions mirror federal pressure, introducing swift administrative hurdles and increasing disenfranchisement risks for eligible voters. Read Article

National: Officials see gaps in election communications as AI makes foreign influence easier | David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

A pull-back from federal foreign-influence tracking initiatives, combined with federal workforce departures, has significantly weakened cross-sector information-sharing channels between government agencies, social media platforms, and non-governmental researchers ahead of the midterm elections. State and local election directors report receiving fewer election-specific intelligence briefings, even as foreign actors leverage advanced artificial intelligence tools to automate, scale, and refine target selection for covert messaging campaigns. While federal officials emphasize that intelligence monitoring and infrastructure support through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency continue, civil society researchers note that the disbanding or restructuring of key federal interagency task forces has created noticeable gaps in real-time threat coordination. Read Article

National: FBI says election officials were targets of suspicious letters containing ‘unknown substance’ | Jessica Husemann and Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat

he FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service have launched a nationwide investigation into a series of suspicious letters—some containing an unidentified white powder—sent to election offices, U.S. senators, and political organizations across more than a dozen states. While postal authorities intercepted many of the mailings prior to delivery, several state election headquarters experienced temporary evacuations or hazardous material responses before tests confirmed the substances were harmless. State election directors emphasized that the physical intimidation tactics will not disrupt ongoing voting operations or delay administrative preparations ahead of the midterm elections. Read Article

Opinion: Publish the Poll Tapes | Andrew Appel/CITP Blog

For well over 100 years, from before 1900 to into the 21st century, political parties sent volunteers to witness the in-the-precinct results at the close of the polls on election night. They did that just in case there were slip-ups (to put it politely) in the transmission and aggregation of the precinct results into district-wide election results. Before there were computerized voting machines, there were mechanical voting machines that displayed the totals on little odometers that were uncovered at the end of election day, that you had to copy down by hand—those were witnessed too. And before the mechanical machines, people counted paper ballots by hand, in the precinct, and announced the per-precinct totals to witnesses in the polling place. Read Article

Book Review: The Plot to Delete Democracy | Sue Halpern/The New York Review of Books

Chances are you already know some random things about the Silicon Valley technology billionaires who have embraced—and been embraced by—the Trump administration: that, for example, Peter Thiel’s data mining company, Palantir, supplies surveillance software to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that the recent public stock offering for SpaceX briefly made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, or that the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, a former Democratic Party stalwart, turned to Trump after he saw, he said, the most successful people sending “their kids to the most politically radical institutions, which teach them how to be America-hating communists.” You may even know that Thiel, in contrast to most of his Silicon Valley peers, supported Trump’s 2016 campaign, or that during the 2024 campaign Musk was Trump’s largest individual donor, giving $239 million to his pro-Trump America PAC and around $50 million to other Trump-aligned groups, or that Andreessen helped staff the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk’s predatory duchy within Trump’s second administration. Government by Silicon Valley | Sue Halpern | The New York Review of Books

Arizona: US Supreme Court turns away Kari Lake lawyer’s challenge to sanctions in Arizona voting machine lawsuit | Sophie Brams/The Hill

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from an attorney sanctioned for filing a frivolous 2022 lawsuit on behalf of former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem. The underlying lawsuit, which sought to prohibit electronic voting machines in Maricopa and Pima counties, was dismissed for lack of standing before a federal judge ordered $122,200 in sanctions against Lake's legal team for making false and misleading statements. By letting the sanction order stand without comment, the high court upheld lower court rulings finding that monetary penalties were necessary to deter attorneys from filing baseless claims that undermine confidence in election infrastructure. Read Article

California threatened by Justice Department over claim of noncitizen voters | Safiyah Riddle and Eric Tucker/Associated Press

The U.S. Department of Justice has threatened California state and local election authorities with emergency federal litigation if they do not review and act within 48 hours on a list of alleged noncitizen voters. Federal officials delivered the flagged names to Los Angeles County on a password-protected thumb drive, demanding that local registrars segregate mail ballots for any individuals whose citizenship cannot be immediately confirmed. California state officials and election clerks pushed back against the demand, calling the 48-hour deadline unreasonable and noting that federal agencies have repeatedly refused to share the underlying methodology or data sources used to generate the list. Read Article

Georgia: Election workers prepare for early voting as talk of DOJ ‘intervention’ leaves advocates unsettled | Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

As Georgia election administrators complete routine logic and accuracy testing on voting machines, a request from the State Election Board’s executive director for Department of Justice "intervention" has drawn severe criticism from voting rights advocates and congressional lawmakers. The executive director's letter petitioned federal authorities to compel voting software updates and intervene in state election administration ahead of early voting, prompting advocates to warn against potential federal overreach or poll monitoring. Congressional Democrats condemned the request as an unauthorized attempt to sow public distrust, while local election directors emphasized that rigorous pre-election testing confirms machines are functioning accurately. Read Article

Indiana voters have 4 minutes to cast their ballot | Jillian Ellison/Lafayette Journal & Courier

Under an Indiana statute recodified in 1987 and updated in 2021, voters are legally restricted to four minutes inside a voting booth during general elections. The time limit—increased from two minutes by the state legislature to accommodate longer ballots and complex referendums—is not enforced strictly or via automated timers. Instead, election officials emphasize that poll workers are trained to offer guidance rather than remove voters who exceed the limit, using the statutory threshold primarily as a prompt to check on voters who may need technical assistance or clarification. Read Article

The Lafayette

Michigan election officials say there is room for improvement in signature petition review process | Ben Solis/Michigan Advance

In testimony before a state House select committee, Michigan election officials defended the integrity of the state’s long-standing signature verification sampling process while acknowledging potential areas for administrative improvement. The inquiry follows a deadlocked Board of State Canvassers vote that blocked a Republican-backed voter proof-of-citizenship initiative after a random 1,000-signature sample fell just short of the statutory validation threshold. State election directors and board members expressed openness to extending petition review timelines and reforming strict compliance rules. Read Article

North Carolina elections board to notify 1,392 voters flagged as potential noncitizens | Ahmed Jallow/NC Newsline

The North Carolina State Board of Elections is issuing notices to 1,392 registered voters flagged as potential noncitizens following cross-referencing with the federal Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. Because the SAVE system tracks historical immigration records, critics highlight that it frequently produces outdated matches by flagging naturalized U.S. citizens who obtained citizenship after their initial license or federal applications. Relying on this database places an unjustified burden on lawful U.S. citizens to affirmatively locate and submit official proof of citizenship, such as passports or birth certificates, to maintain their active voting status ahead of the election. Read Article

South Dakota’s federal-only voter list grows to nearly 6,000, surprising some who are on it | Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight

South Dakota's list of "federal-only" voters has nearly quadrupled to 5,735 following new state laws requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship and strict physical residency verification for voter registration. Under the dual-track system, registrants who lack compliant identification—such as older driver's licenses predating citizenship indicators—or who utilize commercial mail-forwarding addresses are restricted to voting solely in congressional races, excluding them from state executive, legislative, and ballot initiative contests. Voting rights advocates and legal filings highlight that administrative implementation errors and insufficient voter notification have left many eligible citizens unaware of their restricted status ahead of the registration deadline, sparking an active federal lawsuit over state voter disenfranchisement. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Inside the e-pollbook technology powering voting | Sarah Huffman/Technical.ly

Philadelphia and its four collar counties use varying systems to confirm registration and issue the correct ballot to each voter on Nov. 3, according to official records viewed by Technical.ly. Most use electronic pollbooks (e-pollbooks), which can simplify check-ins but need a strong backup plan, said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, an organization that advocates for responsible technology use in elections. “[E-pollbooks are] a great tool. If they don’t work, they can really slow things down,” Smith said. “People are really paying attention to: What’s plan B?” E-pollbooks gained popularity because they make it easier to look up voters and confirm their identities, speeding up check-in, Smith said. They also allow poll workers to update voter information in real time and simplify the process of reconciling votes after the polls close. Read Article

Texas: Glitch Delays 600,000 Voter Registrations as Early Voting Looms | John Yoon /The New York Times

A software programming error within a Department of Public Safety driver’s license portal created a backlog of nearly 600,000 voter registration applications across Texas, forcing county election administrators into late-stage processing scrambles ahead of early voting. The glitch—traced to a system upgrade by vendor Deloitte—failed to record voter registration requests submitted between December 2025 and February 2026, leading state authorities to dump bulk files onto local clerks just weeks before registration deadlines. Voting rights groups filed suit in Bexar County seeking to ensure system reliability under a 2021 online registration settlement. While county workers cleared the vast majority of pending records using overtime and state-reimbursed temporary staff, state officials advised any voters missing from local rolls to cast provisional ballots. Read Article

Wisconsin officials can count ballots that arrive late over official errors, judge rules | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

A Dane County Circuit judge ruled that Wisconsin election clerks must count absentee ballots that are in municipal custody prior to the 8 p.m. Election Day deadline but arrive late to polling places solely due to election official error. The decision resolves a lawsuit brought by Madison voters whose timely returned ballots were initially ordered excluded by the Wisconsin Elections Commission after staff delivery delays. The court affirmed that voters who comply with all statutory requirements cannot be disenfranchised by administrative mistakes, though the ruling strictly excludes delays caused by voters, postal services, or third parties. Read Article

National: With threats to midterms, states say Trump administration isn’t helping | Joshua Yang and Warren P. Strobel/The Washington Post

U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that while foreign adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran continue digital disinformation efforts to undermine public confidence, there is no evidence of direct interference with voting machines or vote counts. However, state election administrators report significant communication and resource gaps due to federal structural changes, including staff layoffs at CISA, the dissolution of the Foreign Malign Influence Center, and leadership vacancies on the Election Assistance Commission. While CISA recently issued an updated security plan for the midterms, former officials and state administrators argue that late-stage federal guidance offers limited utility with voting already underway. Consequently, state leaders—including several Republican election officials—express growing frustration with federal posture, noting that administrative friction and lack of timely intelligence sharing present greater operational hurdles than foreign cyber threats. Read Article

National: Election officials push voters to ‘use the drop box rather than the mailbox’ | Jeremy Herb and Gabe Cohen/CNN

Election officials across the country are actively encouraging voters to return mail ballots via designated drop boxes rather than traditional postal mail to avoid potential delivery delays. Operational changes within the U.S. Postal Service, including reduced local transit trips and centralized postmarking hubs, have contributed to a noticeable rise in late-arriving ballots during recent primary contests. In response, local election offices have invested heavily in retrofitting drop boxes with advanced heat sensors, automatic fire suppression devices, physical tamper resistance, and digital audit tracking. Despite these infrastructure enhancements, drop box availability remains politically polarized, with several states imposing strict bans or limits while others expand drop box networks to ensure timely ballot returns. Read Article

National: Trump administration sued over plans to send election monitors to voting sites | Adam Gabbatt/The Guardian

The NAACP has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice over plans to deploy roughly 1,000 federal election monitors to polling places across all 50 states during the upcoming midterm elections. The complaint targets Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon and seeks to compel the immediate release of Freedom of Information Act records regarding the monitors' deployment. Civil rights advocates argue that the unannounced, aggressive presence of federal personnel, exemplified by an August incident where monitors attempted to inspect voting machines during Wyoming's primary, lacks statutory authority and threatens voter intimidation. Read Article

National: Lawmakers Want Colleagues to Promise They Will Accept Midterm Election Results | Louise Radnofsky/Wall Street Journal

A bipartisan coalition led by Representatives Don Bacon and Josh Gottheimer is circulating a public commitment letter calling on House leadership and colleagues to respect state election certifications for the upcoming midterms. The pledge directly opposes parliamentary maneuvers aimed at refusing or delaying the seating of certified members-elect when the 120th Congress convenes in January. The effort emerges amid heightened concerns that conservative groups and party leadership might attempt to invoke Article I powers to judge member qualifications as a pretext to deny representation to states with contested voting procedures or absent voter identification laws. Read Article

National: Are Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen losing steam? | Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat